Why France and Britain must get their act together

The Franco-British military axis is crucial to our nation's success in a
multi-polar world, argues Paddy Ashdown.

Nicolas Sarkozy greets David Cameron on his visit to Paris in MayPhoto: EPA

By Paddy Ashdown

9:37AM GMT 19 Dec 2010

The ratification of the UK-France Defence Treaty is potentially a real ground-breaker in terms of the way we look at our national defence and secure our place in a fast-changing world. But that will only be the case if there is a much clearer view of what all this means and genuine political will to drive it through.

The Suez crisis cruelly revealed the weakness of the old European colonial powers once we were left naked and exposed without US backing. Britain responded to this humiliation by snuggling closer to the US. France moved the other way, standing apart and trying to build a European alternative based more on incipient rivalry to the US rather than engagement with them.

Both of these responses were perfectly rational in the days when the world was mono-polar and dominated by a single super power. But the rise of China, India, Brazil and others is creating a very differently shaped globe. The US may well – probably will – remain, for the next decade or more, the world’s most powerful nation. But she will now hold that power in a very different context – a multi-polar world, not a mono-poplar one.

Washington is now looking just as much west across the Pacific as east across the Atlantic. Europe cannot any longer rely on ties of history, language and culture to underpin our relationship with Washington. We are judged by this US Administration – and will be judged by all future ones – less by bonds of sentimentality and more by what Europe can deliver to the causes driven by our shared interests. And if Afghanistan is anything to go by, that’s currently not much.

One reason for this is that we Europeans haven’t got our act together – though Washington now enthusiastically wants that to happen, where previously they opposed it.

Another is our severe financial difficulties.

Here France and Britain face exactly the same problem. And these are not just financial. They also touch on our view of ourselves, which now has to be tempered by a proper if painful assessment of what we really need for security in the new world in which we now find ourselves.

So working together makes economic sense, strategic sense and geo-political sense at the same time.

To our west, the US will remain our principle non-European ally. But we can no longer rely on her as defender of last resort and friend in all circumstance in the way we have in the past. To our east we have a highly assertive Russian President, prepared to resurrect the Brezhnev doctrine and use force when he thinks he can get away with it – as we saw in Georgia. And beyond that, a rising China, an increasingly self-confident India and fast growing economic powers in South America.

If we Europeans do not realise that the right response to the new global situation we find ourselves in is to deepen the integration of our defence and foreign affairs (and yes economic affairs, too) then we are bloody fools and the next decades will be much more uncomfortable that they need be.

Which is why the new Franco-British military axis is so important.

There are, however, three key problems which need to be overcome, if this is important new direction is not to meander away into the wilderness and get lost, like Mr Blair’s St Malo initiative before it.

The first is political will. If this to be more than gimmick, then it needs to be invested with real political will – from the very top – and from both sides. I hear there is already some slackening of interest in both Paris and London.

The second is a realisation – so far, I believe almost totally absent on both sides – that this will not be done from top down, but from the bottom up. You cannot bring two armed forces relying purely on both sides' Generals and defence experts sitting in a room together. That’s one of the reasons why St Malo failed. And it is one of the reasons why the current Franco-German military relationship appears to be making little progress, too, despite regular meetings, served by a huge secretariat and a whole Franco German Brigade to show for it. Generals will not drive the kind of integration we want. Only a real push towards integrating our defence industries will. That’s where the huge savings are to be made. That’s where the move towards common procurement can be pursued. That’s where we can put together a genuine European defence industry which would compete better with and make us less reliant on, the defence giants on the other side of the Atlantic.

This won’t be easy of course. Attempts to do it have not been hugely successful in the past. But times are different now. We have less money to waste and greater need to act together. Given the political will (and we will need a lot of it in both Paris and London) this is where real progress – with real effect – could be made.

The third impediment to making a success of this new direction is the wide disparity of views between London and Paris on what this is all about. Paris, with an already existing military relationship with Germany, sees this as a key building block to assembling, albeit organically rather than through Brussels, a hard core of European military co-operation which others will then join. They see this as the first step in creating a genuine, rather than mythical, European defence entity.

But London (or rather some in the London Government) regard that with horror. They do not see this as the first step to wider European defence co-operation but as a single and not be repeated step with a single ally which can go thus far, but no further.

This is the principle rock on which all this could founder. And that would be tragedy.

I am struck by the fact that the Conservatives in the Coalition have been more pragmatic than dogmatic about Europe and greatly welcome this.

I hope they will now be able to find the space to be pragmatic on this issue too. Our defence co-operation with France has huge dividends to deliver. But only if it can be underpinned by an equivalent integration of our two defence industries, backed by with the will behind it to make it happen and an understanding that, if it works, then it something to build on and not just an end in itself.

Then we would doing something which our best ally, Washington, wants very much, which would help both our security and our taxpayers and which makes solid good sense in the new world in which we Europeans now find ourselves.